Salient » Henrietta Bollingerhttp://salient.org.nz
Tue, 28 Nov 2017 21:43:59 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.18Token Cripplehttp://salient.org.nz/2017/10/token-cripple-19/
http://salient.org.nz/2017/10/token-cripple-19/#commentsSun, 15 Oct 2017 20:00:02 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=48894While I was interested in the return of the Special Votes I was disappointed by the result. And while openly left wing and a Green Party member, my disappointment was not so much partisan as it was to do with being disabled. The final vote count saw Mojo Mathers lose her seat in Parliament.

Mojo has done work across multiple portfolios and her motivation to enter parliament came from being an environmental advocate rather than through disability politics.

Indeed, given the sometimes uneasy relationship between the deaf and disabled communities, she has likely found herself as an advocate for more than one minority community with conflicting views despite some common ground.

However, I cannot overstate the significance of seeing someone with impairments working at a national level for the rights of disabled people. Someone who was always open to engaging with the community and highly conscious of the link back to the people she represented.

It felt validating and has been a key part of bringing to the table accessibility within parliament.

The Disabled Persons Assembly ranked the Green Party as the party who focused on disability rights the most. While I don’t doubt there are individual disability advocates across the political spectrum, I am wary of what will happen without a truly visible advocate. I am wary of disability rights once again becoming something worked on behind the scenes and at worst a “nice to have.”

The challenge now for the Green Party will be to continue in this vein. To be loud, proud, and visible doing this work. The challenge to Parliament as a whole will be to not let accessibility fall by the wayside.

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http://salient.org.nz/2017/09/token-cripple-18/#commentsSun, 17 Sep 2017 21:00:30 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=48402I have written before about the representation of disability on screen and stage. Often the question that arises for me is: who are these stories for? Often the stories we tell about disability are aimed at people who do not live with disability. British actor and comedian Francesca Martinez speaks about this brilliantly. She was once offered a role where the character was incapable of any speech or movement and jokes that she suggested that they cast a shoe or a carrot instead. She felt she could not possibly be up to playing such a complex and demanding portrayal of disability. Not only are these stories so often aimed at non-disabled people, they are also created by non-disabled people, who see disability as a shorthand for illustrating our common humanity.

This means we are not in control of the stories told about us. We often reap none of the benefits either.

Not the case in a new Australian TV-movie (due for Australian release in October) Jeremy the Dud. The comedy takes place in an inverse world where disability is the norm. Jeremy, a man “without specialty,” is subject to discrimination and misunderstandings that disabled people will easily recognise. I’ve seen the world imagined like this before. It is a simple premise. What really excites me is that it makes a strong statement about disabled creatives, and makes room for them to do creative work.

However, disability is not the only feature of our lives. Therefore, stories that center disability are not the only stories we should feature in. So, while I’m looking forward to this, I’ll also be looking forward to those stories where disability is incidental, because we have other things to say.

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http://salient.org.nz/2017/08/token-cripple-17/#commentsSun, 06 Aug 2017 21:00:57 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=47876With an election on the horizon I’ve been pondering how to vote as a disabled person. For me, my vote, and in some sense my political voice, are very much informed by this experience. Access to democracy is a difficult thing; it requires people to have access not only to the ballot box but also the conversations around politics. It requires that our community be represented, be visible. As a disabled woman then, Mojo Mathers’ entry into politics was pretty significant to me.

More recently still, I was surprised by a Facebook message from a friend which read: Hey, Australia’s answer to Chloe Swarbrick has Cerebral Palsy! Opening the attached article, I read that in the wake of Scott Ludlam’s departure from the Australian Greens, Jordon Steele-John will take his seat. He is considered an unconventional candidate. At 22 he will be the youngest person ever elected to the Senate, as well as being a wheelchair user and having come to politics through disability activism. This is significant in more ways than one. However, it seems he is facing barriers right from the start, barriers which stem from our limited expectations of disabled people. I laughed through gritted teeth at his revelation that “throughout the day people came up to me and were putting silver coins on the table — they assumed I was fundraising for charity. They were surprised to find out I actually wanted to be their elected representative.”

It has me wondering what it will take to normalise disabled people as active participants in our society and democracy. Not as passive recipients of support, but as people equally as capable of shaping their world as their able-bodied peers. Not as people being spoken for and cared for, but as leaders in their own right.

The right to die has recently been introduced by David Seymour’s proposed End of Life Bill. The issue of assisted dying has long been a contentious one for the disability community. I have heard compelling arguments from disabled people on both sides. For all these people and their non-disabled counterparts, the debate is deeply emotive.

My own position is no different. I am a disabled person, poor mental health is a feature of my life, and my friend’s lives, and I have lost people to suicide. These are some of the things that colour my objection to the legislation. I also have concerns about the particular way in which life with a disability is often seen as less worth living, too difficult to abide, when in fact value can be found in them.

Of course, there are distinctions between the experiences of disability and terminal illness, distinctions between an open discussion about the wish to die and the often private battle of suicide. The Bill has reportedly been carefully drafted to avoid cases of coercion. Personally, I am unsure if this will be enough in cases where a disabled person cannot communicate independently.

But perhaps I should put aside my misgivings about medical care being just as subjective as any other field, a field limited by what we currently know about the singular experience of death. After all, it is a choice.

Choice is the very thing that bothers me. That life and death are framed in the language of neo-liberal ideology. My concern is that a Bill like this will serve to individualise and isolate people further. That it will inform how — or not — we choose to build community. Disabled people are already isolated by a system which emphasises independence and has a limited, economics based view of what constitutes a worthy contribution to society. We will benefit more from a society which values the collective, values needing support and caring for each other, not this final “choice”.

]]>http://salient.org.nz/2017/07/token-cripple-16/feed/0Doctor Whohttp://salient.org.nz/2017/07/doctor-who/
http://salient.org.nz/2017/07/doctor-who/#commentsSun, 23 Jul 2017 21:00:02 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=47542So there we have it — Time Lords are genderfluid. It has been confirmed that Jodie Whittaker, a woman (gasp!), will take on the traditionally male role of the Doctor in Doctor Who once Peter Capaldi leaves the show.

I was first introduced to the show during its Russell T. Davies-led reboot in 2010 through family viewings with my sisters —and initially our dad, who had watched it as a kid. My interest piqued at some point during the Matt Smith era when, with Steven Moffat at the helm, the Doctor turned into a sonic screwdriver-brandishing Sherlock Holmes, and I was no longer swept along in the mystery but having events explained by the man himself in retrospect.

It is from this affectionate distance, and as a writer myself, that I’m interested in the media and online discussion of this casting choice. This latest change makes sense within the world of the story — why would a character who can move through universes and transcend their own body be restricted by something like gender?

The change is great in the sense that it foregrounds a female-bodied Time Lord as someone who has power, presence, and agency. There is also the potential for the change to be explained in a way that would (re)position the Time Lord as a genderfluid or genderqueer figure in pop culture — although it remains to be seen if the writers will do this.

However, here we have the actress — who said the role was important to her as a feminist — urging fans not to be “scared by [her] gender.” We also have the casting of a female lead being reported as though it is a daring choice. It is a first, yes, but it is not daring.

It is also deeply pragmatic. It offers the new head writer (Chris Chibnall of Broadchurch) a way to make his mark fairly immediately. It also responds to criticism that Doctor Who has become sexist, with only 57% of recent episodes passing the Bechdel Test in comparison to 89% in earlier reboot episodes. It responds to what the programme’s largely non-male fanbase has been wanting to see for years — that they can be the hero(ine) too and not just the helpmate.

Perhaps, most usefully, it is another popular springboard from which to consider how women and nonbinary folk fare across film and television. Critique leveled at this show is symptomatic of a wider industry in which we are frequently not in control of our own stories, or the financial beneficiaries of those stories as they are told.

We need to support getting more women and gender diverse people into positions as directors, as producers, as writers before we can see real sea-change in storytelling. We can look to our own communities as well as to wider popular culture and be supportive of, and gentle with, those new voices who are trying to present more diversity and take risks. And as this happens, we should feel heartened by this small step across time and space.

]]>http://salient.org.nz/2017/07/doctor-who/feed/0The Things We Sharehttp://salient.org.nz/2017/07/the-things-we-share/
http://salient.org.nz/2017/07/the-things-we-share/#commentsSun, 16 Jul 2017 20:50:05 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=47464As a Pākehā kid, when I first learnt to mihi, I found that building a sense of my own whakapapa was a kind of patchwork, something I could stitch together by pulling threads from family stories. The waka I chose, or borrowed from my father, was called the Wanganella.

That was the ship that brought my paternal grandmother and her family to New Zealand from Germany, a short month before the outbreak of World War Two. It was certainly the most significant ship in my heritage from where I stood. Strangely, my German history fit easily here. I always felt closest to this “foreign” part of myself when speaking Māori, a language and oratory grounded here in Aotearoa. Unlike the arguments I found myself falling into in my English-language classes about why it was important to me, my interest in my history was encouraged and never questioned here.

At the time I was piecing together my mihi I had already been learning German for a number of years. My grandmother Marei, a former primary school teacher, had patiently taught me some sentences but insisted that she only spoke Kinderdeutsch — children’s German. She was only three when she arrived in New Zealand and had all her formal education in New Zealand schools, so felt more at home in English in many ways. I hungered after more than simple expressions, and over the years I had a series of wonderful teachers, eventually enrolling in a correspondence school German course and finally a major in German at Victoria.

My decision to pursue the language was intriguing to people. I’d chosen a language often characterised as harsh, difficult, and one which of course carried the heavy history of Holocaust. So I found myself frequently explaining my history.

My family were German-Jews. This is the most succinct explanation, though the reality is more complex. My family were German-Jews in the eyes of the Third Reich. My great-grandmother had been brought up in Berlin, not Orthodox, but very connected through her parents to the rest of her Jewish community. She converted to Catholicism at eighteen and later married my great-grandfather who had been brought up Catholic.

Yet it was Jewishness that would force them to leave their home in search of a new and safer life. Identity labels ascribed at either the will or grace of others were a feature of their story. My great-grandparents were expected to report to police frequently when they first arrived in New Zealand. Having fled from Germany they were suspected by authorities, because they might be spies for that same country. So, the road, which ended in their naturalised citizenship, was an uneasy one — despite New Zealand wishing to view itself as a gracious place that opened its arms to refugees.

It is them I think of when looking at global politics today. I attended the Women’s March with a sign saying I was marching as the queer-disabled-granddaughter of a refugee. I thought of them when looking at the images of JFK airport. Closer to home, I thought of them as we debated our own refugee quota and when our Prime Minister failed, in my view, to respond to Trump’s refugee ban with adequate energy. The lack of response prompted me to write my first ever letter to the Prime Minister. We see the issue in such a different light from one another that I am skeptical whether my letter had any impact. I received a reply on his behalf assuring me that the Office of the Prime Minister were satisfied with their own level of response.

However, I felt an urgency to convey that there is a heart-wrenchingly human side to the issue. This was once my family, and could well be me.

It is easy to get lost when important debates like these are discussed in language of quotas and everything is so carefully measured. While some of this may be prudent, in terms of making sure we are providing for all citizens, it can also be a way of hiding. What we lose behind the statistics is that these are the lives of real people. Real people are always going to be harder to discuss; they cannot be as easily categorised or dismissed as numbers. I read somewhere that statistics are people with the tears wiped away. Real people have to be looked in the eyes.

I think that braver and more empathetic leadership when responding to a refugee crisis or developing an immigration policy with heart requires putting real people back into the discussion. For a start, I would like to hear the word “people” used more by our politicians and media than quota, group, or population.

I come back to the people present in my own history. My great-grandparents Maria and John Dronke were exceptionally grateful and affectionate citizens of a country which, in accepting them, had saved their lives and the lives of their children. My great-grandparents went on to make significant contributions to the arts. Maria worked as a drama teacher and in later life completed a Master’s in German poetry at Victoria University of Wellington. John was a founding member of the National Orchestra and later went on to work in the law as he had done in Germany, making contributions to New Zealand’s original patent law.

This is another aspect of the debate I do not feel is highlighted enough: what we stand to gain from willing contributors to this country, and, furthermore, their right to contribute. So often, in a neoliberal climate that characterises human nature as inherently self-interested, we appear to measure the worth of people in negative economic terms: what they will cost the state. This discourse is heard in debates about many areas of life. It seems particularly loud in relation to the issue of refugee resettlement. It seems imperative to me that the debate needs changing. The other side of the coin is the ways in which our country could be enriched.

Recently, I went to an event that involved both refugee and native-born New Zealanders sharing food from their childhoods. We met each other over this shared meal and the stories that come with it. I introduced myself briefly and indicated the packets of Jaffas I’d brought along as evidence of where I’d come from: a very safe, Wellington-based childhood full of rainy days at the movies. Many other people had brought family dishes passed down through generations.

My grandmother too had identified first and foremost as a New Zealander. The last election she participated in, she had cast a vote for the then fledgling Mana Party due to its commitment to upholding Treaty values, values generally summarised as a commitment to biculturalism. Faced with a necessarily multicultural society, there seems to be a strain of fear that the values and aspirations that new arrivals have for the country will be radically and destructively different to the aspirations of those living here. This neatly ignores that all of us at some point in history were descended from newcomers. And maybe this is where we need to meet refugee resettlement as an issue too; face-to-face over the things we share.

]]>http://salient.org.nz/2017/07/the-things-we-share/feed/0Token Cripplehttp://salient.org.nz/2017/06/token-cripple-15/
http://salient.org.nz/2017/06/token-cripple-15/#commentsMon, 05 Jun 2017 21:00:39 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=47268Negotiations between E tū Union and the government have brought about a significant change for workers in the care sector. Effective from July 1, care and support staff will receive a pay increase of $3–7 per hour.

This is huge in acknowledging the importance of an historically unvalued profession, work which, to people like me, is critical to our daily lives. In brief, my theory is that the value of work is relative to how “clean” the work is. I mean this literally. In support work, particularly personal care, you are often confronted by other people’s dirt, waste, bodies, and bodily fluid. Of course it is also undervalued for being “woman’s work”; traditionally care was the preserve of the feminine/female.

As RNZreported, the exact increase will “depend on the work.” It will also depend on how qualified and experienced workers are, the pay graded accordingly.

This has me thinking: what/who gets to count as qualified? Hiring my own staff for the last year has shown me I want to work with people who can engage with me as a person. In my interactions with staff, what technical knowledge they have is almost immaterial.

The success of my support depends on the success of the working relationship: am I comfortable with them in my home? Are they a friendly presence first thing in the morning? Are they reliable? Can they fit easily into a routine involving flatmates and pet cat, pet quails? A selection of questions I might ask myself about a potential employee. But rapport like this is not so easily measured. I am fairly self-determined about who I have do this work for me but not all people are.and the experience of people using support should be central to any conversation about the value of this work.

]]>http://salient.org.nz/2017/06/token-cripple-15/feed/0Token Cripplehttp://salient.org.nz/2017/05/token-cripple-14/
http://salient.org.nz/2017/05/token-cripple-14/#commentsSun, 21 May 2017 21:00:31 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=46952I am fourteen or so lying on a table for an x-ray. This is a familiar prone position, I lie and look up at the machine and breathe out, wait for the gentle click, the light that makes me feel like I am being photocopied. I notice the body of the machine has been decorated with bold, cheerful stickers to entertain and distract small children while they lie there — stars, smiley faces, clownfish; the usual suspects.

This is a familiar event. Since I was born ten weeks early and with Cerebral Palsy there was always a concern of hip-dysplasia, where your hips come out of their sockets, and scoliosis, curvature of the spine. The scoliosis has been aggravated by spending the large part of every day since I started school seated in my wheelchair leaving me stooped and shorter than both my identical twin and younger sister. My hips however have stayed firmly in place. Every year when this is reported I feel a little proud of them for exceeding expectations.

Being born with a disability is to have a body that is full of potential. A body perpetually in a state of becoming. A state that is more accentuated than the usual ebbs and flows of living because more people talk it about more often. My body has always existed in relation to a body it could have been (able-bodied like my twin’s) and/or one it could now become (more or less able relative to itself). In both cases the desired direction was towards more normal.

Particularly when I was still growing, the objective of doctors, physios, and parents was to get closer to this elusive measure. Though my parents never wanted me to feel like having a disability was a “bad thing” per se, they also wanted to maximise the number of ways I could be independent from them in the future. They had that expectation of me just as they did of their other kids, part of my being normal.

Being born with a disability also means that my abnormal body is normal. Not in comparison to other bodies around me, or what it could or might have been, but that it is normal for me to inhabit. As a general rule I trust it to function well albeit within a different set of parameters to other bodies.

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http://salient.org.nz/2017/05/token-cripple-13/#commentsSun, 07 May 2017 21:00:37 +0000http://salient.org.nz/?p=46652I am generally wary of giving language too much power to define ourselves. Intersectional thinking is urgently needed for people to claim space. I shy away from the way it seems to have been adopted in popular use, turning every complex person into a list of nouns: Pākehā-cis-lesbian-crip-degree carrying-intersectional feminist. A list, rather than a web of identities that co-exist, overlap, can result in stigma or privilege in certain spaces, and sometimes both. It sometimes seems like you have to “out” yourself as these things in order to come across as having valid perspective, which can make deeply personal debate all the more difficult.

I’ve recently been reminded though of the quiet power of finding the language you have been looking for. Language that you didn’t know was there.

I read a Spinoff article recently where the writer claimed that her able-bodied friends were inspirational. She meant this in the sense that they included and valued her in everything without making a big deal about the disability. I knew what she was getting at. The clever inverse of “inspiration porn” still walked a fine line: applauding able bods for being “normal” about disability. Since then I found a more nuanced iteration of this sentiment: access intimacy. Mia Mingus coined the term in 2011 in an essay “Access Intimacy: The Missing Link”. She makes a deliberate distinction between access intimacy and the intimacies of romance, friendship, solidarity, sex. I can’t help placing it on this continuum as a little articulated love: Access intimacy is that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else “gets” your access needs. The kind of eerie comfort that your disabled self feels with someone on a purely access level.There is a multiplicity of ways this can manifest but Mingus stresses it is an understanding of the world which no longer asks disabled people to fit into an ableist world, rather a holding of space.